ILYA SOMIN is Professor of Law
at George Mason University School of Law. His research focuses on constitutional
law, property law, and the study of popular political participation and its
implications for constitutional democracy. He is the author ofThe
Grasping Hand: Kelo v. City of New London and the Limits of Eminent
Domain(University of Chicago Press, forthcoming), andDemocracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter(Stanford University Press, 2013), and coauthor of
A Conspiracy Against Obamacare: The Volokh Conspiracy and the Health Care Case
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). His work has appeared in numerous scholarly
journals, including the Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review,
Northwestern University Law Review, Georgetown Law Journal,
Critical Review, and others. Somin has also published articles in a
variety of popular press outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, the
New York Times Room for Debate website, USA Today, the Wall Street
Journal OpinionJournal.com, Newark Star Ledger, Orlando Sentinel, South China
Morning Post, Legal Times, National Law Journal and Reason.
He has been quoted or interviewed by the New York Times, Washington
Post, NPR, BBC, Al Jazeera and the Voice of America, among other media.
He has
testified on the use of drones for targeted killing in the War on Terror before
the US Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and
Human Rights. In 2009, he
testified on property rights issues at the United States Senate Judiciary
Committee confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Somin
writes regularly for the popular Volokh
Conspiracy law and politics blog. From 2006 to 2013, he served as
Co-Editor of the
Supreme Court Economic Review,
one of the country's top-rated law and economics journals.

In 2008, Somin served a visiting professor at the
University of Pennsylvania Law School. He has also been a visiting professor at
the University of Hamburg, Germany, the University of Torcuato Di Tella
in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Zhengzhou University in China. Before joining the faculty at George Mason, Somin was the John M.
Olin Fellow in Law at Northwestern University Law School in 2002-2003. In
2001-2002, he clerked for the Hon. Judge Jerry E. Smith of the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. Professor Somin earned his B.A., Summa Cum Laude,
at Amherst College, M.A. in Political Science from Harvard University, and J.D.
from Yale Law School.